#jacobin

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The far right grows through “disaster fantasies”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/25/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano">https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/25/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano

The core of the prepper fantasy: "What if the world ended in the precise way that made me the most important person?" The ultra-rich fantasize about emerging from luxury bunkers with an army of mercs and thumbdrives full of bitcoin to a world in ruins that they restructure using their "leadership skills."

The ethnographer Rich Miller spent his career embedding with preppers, eventually writing the canonical book of the fantasies that power their obsessions, Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times:

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3637295.html

Miller recounts how the disasters that preppers prepare for are the disasters that will call upon their skills, like the water chemist who's devoted his life to preparing to help his community recover from a terrorist attack on its water supply; and who, when pressed, has no theory as to why any terrorist would stage such an attack:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#preppers-unprepared

Prepping is what happens when you are consumed by the fantasy of a terrible omnicrisis that you can solve, personally. It's an individualistic fantasy, and that makes it inherently neoliberal. Neoliberalism's mind-zap is to convince us all that our only role in society is as an individual ("There is no such thing as society" – M. Thatcher). If we have a workplace problem, we must bargain with our bosses, and if we lose, our choices are to quit or eat shit. Under no circumstances should we solve labor disputes through a union, especially not one that wins strong legal protections for workers and then holds the government's feet to the fire.

Same with bad corporate conduct: getting ripped off? Caveat emptor! Vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. Elections are slow and politics are boring. But "vote with your wallet" turns retail therapy into a form of civics.

This individualistic approach to problem solving does useful work for powerful people, because it keeps the rest of us thoroughly powerless. Voting with your wallet is casting a ballot in a rigged election that's always won by the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that's never you. That's why the right is so obsessed with removing barriers to election spending: the wealthy can't win a one-person/one-vote election (to be in the 1% is to be outnumbered 99:1), but unlimited campaign spending lets the wealthy vote in real elections using their wallets, not just just ballots.

You can't recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Practically speaking, you can't even recycle. All those plastics you lovingly washed and sorted ended up in a landfill or floating in the ocean. Plastics recycling is a hoax perpetrated by the petrochemical industry, who knew all along that their products would never be recycled. These despoilers convinced us to view the systemic rot of corporate ecocide as an individual matter, chiding us about "littering" and exhorting us to sort our garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/14/they-knew/#doing-it-again

We are bombarded by real problems that require urgent solutions that can only be resolved through collective action, which we are told is impossible. This is an objectively frightening state of affairs, and it makes people go nuts.

At the start of this century, in the weeks before 9/11, a message-board poster calling himself Gecko45 went Web 1.0 viral by earnestly bullshitting about his job as a mall security guard, doing battle with heavily armed gangs, human traffickers, and ravening monsters. Gecko45's posts were unhinged: he started out seeking advice for doubling up on body-armor to protect him while he deployed his smoke bombs and his partner assembled a high-powered rifle. Though Gecko45 was apparently sincere, he drew tongue-in-cheek replies from the other posters on GlockTalk, who soon dubbed him the "Mall Ninja":

https://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/

The Mall Ninja professed to patrolling a suburban shopping mall while armed with 15 firearms as he carried out his duties as "Sergeant of a three-man Rapid Tactical Force at one of America’s largest indoor retail shopping areas." His qualifications? Mastery "of three martial arts including ninjitsu, which means I can wear the special boots to climb walls."

The Mall Ninja's fantasy of a single brave individual, defending the sleepy populace from violent, armed mobs is instantly recognizable as an ancestor to today's right wing fantasy of America's cities as "no-go zones" filled with "open air drug markets," patrolled by MS-13 and antifa super-soldiers. And while the Mall Ninja drew derision – even from the kinds of people who hang out on a message board called "GlockTalk" – today, his brand of fantasy wins elections.

On Jacobin, Olly Haynes interviews the political writer Richard Seymour about this phenomenon:

https://jacobin.com/2024/11/disaster-nationalism-fantasies-far-right/

Seymour's latest book is Disaster Nationalism:The Downfall of Liberal Civilization, an exploration of the strange obsessions of the right with imaginary disasters in the midst of real ones:

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3147-disaster-nationalism

You know these imaginary disasters: "FEMA death camps, 'great replacement theory,' the 'Great Reset,' fifteen-minute cities, 5G towers being beacons of mind control, and microchips installed in people through vaccines." As Seymour writes, these conspiracy fantasies are proliferated by authoritarian regimes and their supporters, especially as real disasters rage around them.

For example, during the Oregon wildfires, people who were threatened by blazing forests that hit 800'C refused to evacuate because they'd been convinced that the fires were set by antifa arsonists in a bid to "wipe out white conservative Christians." They barricaded themselves in their fire-threatened homes, brandishing guns and prepping for the antifa mob.

Seymour says that this "disaster nationalism" "processes disaster in a way that is actually quite enlivening." Confronted with the helplessness of a real disaster that can only be solved through the collective action you've been told is both impossible and a Communist plot, you retreat to an individualistic disaster fantasy that you can play an outsized role in. Every crisis – the climate emergency, poverty, a toxic environment – is replaced by "bad people" and you can go get them.

For authoritarian politicians, a world of bad people at the gates who can only be stopped by "the good guys" makes for great politics. It impels proto-fascist movements to electoral victories, all over the world: in the US, of course, but Seymour also analyzes this as the phenomenon behind the electoral victories of authoritarian ethno-nationalists in India, Israel, Brazil, and all over the world.

I find Seymour's analysis bracing and clarifying. It explains the right's tendency to obsess over the imaginary at the expense of the real. Think of conservatives' obsession with imaginary and hypothetical children, from Qanon's child trafficking conspiracies to the forced birth movement's fixation on "the unborn."

It's not just that these kids don't exist – it's that the right is either indifferent or actively hostile to real children. Qanon peaked at the same time as Trump's "kids in cages" family separation policy, which saw thousands of kids separated from their parents, many forever, as a deliberate policy.

The forced birth movement spent decades fighting to overturn Roe in the name of saving "the unborn" – even as its leaders were also overturning the Child Tax Credit, the most successful child poverty alleviation measure in American history. Actual children were left to sink into food insecurity and precarity, to be enlisted to work overnight shifts in meat-packing plants, to fall into homelessness – even as the movement celebrated the "culture of life" that would rescue hypothetical children.

Lifting kids out of poverty and building a world where parents can afford to raise as many children as they care to have is a collective endeavor. Firebombing abortion clinics or storming into a pizza parlor with an assault rifle is an individual rescue fantasy that escapes into the world.

Mall Ninja politics are winning.

[misscalming]

Movie Saint-Just invented evil gay office coworker

[aspiringbelle]

They didn't care, so ...

[toastyslayingbutter]

Article that probably should have been published by Jacobin several months ago - but better late than never!

[indizombie]

Under the guise of fighting terrorism, Israel continues to act with impunity in the region, emboldened by unconditional support from the United States and an unceasing flow of arms shipments. For 12 months, the United States has manufactured and shipped while Israel delivered the bombs that have massacred over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and nearly 1,000 civilians in Lebanon. (According to the nonprofit organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), Israel has launched over 8,000 attacks in Lebanon since last October.) Since the start of its genocidal war in Gaza, Israel has committed war crimes nearly every day, and every war crime bears the undeniable imprints of US complicity.

Seraj Assi, ‘Israel Is Extending Its Genocidal War to Lebanon’, Jacobin

[dzgrizzle]

Socialists aren’t driven by envy of the “more successful.” We are socialists because we want workers to have what’s rightfully theirs — and we know a world with less greed and envy, and where everyone has what they need, is possible. 

[herpsandbirds]

White-necked Jacobin (Florisuga mellivora), male, family Trochilidae, order Apodiformes, Mindo, Ecuador

photograph by Yi Feng

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to journalist and political writer Doug Henwood. Originally from Teaneck, New Jersey, Doug has been writing publicly about politics since he started his newsletter Left Business Observer, which ran from 1986 until 2013. He's also written for Harper's, The Village Voice, Jacobin and is a contributing editor at The Nation. In addition, Doug has written four books: State of the U.S.A. Atlas, Wall Street, After the New Economy and My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency. Currently, he hosts the weekly KPFA Berkeley radio show and podcast Behind the News.

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

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[robertbrancatelli]

Le 14 Juillet

Unfortunately, I remember quite a few assassinations and assassination attempts on the lives of American political figures. My first was the murder of President Kennedy as he traveled in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas in 1963, which, from my seven-year-old perspective, was astonishing for its ability to shut down the entire adult world if only for a brief period (see Business as Usual and A Fall…

[samtaylorillustrator]

🚜★ Biden for the latest @jacobinmag 🐄 Town & Country issue 🇺🇸🐔

[victusinveritas]

I could forgive a lot of things from Pete because I knew his folks and however tangentially, him (my sister was in high school FedChallenge with him and he was over fairly frequently for a few years), growing up in South Bend. He also wasn't a dogshit mayor (despite Smart Streets and some utter mishandling of various issues, but that's inside South Bend politics), and some of the things he has tried to do as Secretary of Transportation have been good...because that fucker loves trains, always has been disturbingly passionate about them. Growing up a block away from him, I get it, the sounds of the trains at night were a lullaby in our very much middle class/upper middle class neighborhood.

Anyhow, aside from all that shit, any past vague acquaintance or how friendly he's always been to my folks, I wish him nothing but cracked teeth and unfitting shoes for the rest of his existence for this comment. If you want to read the appropriately damning article from Jacobin (admittedly a partisan source, but one his father, an avowed Gramscian and hell of a fun guy, would have supported--the arguments they would get into with Joe supporting anarchosocialist views and Pete the most bland Liberal Democratic stuff imaginable often carried when walking the dog near their house, once my father and I even got roped in to refereeing one.) here you are.

Basically, he said that as regrettable as it is, keeping baby formula in stock is not the job of the US government, and then went on to defend the free market at quite possibly the worst time to defend the free market. All an opponent would need to do to win is say "I believe we should feed babies." And they would get 75% of the vote and probably their head on a coin. He could have said "Yeah, this is the price we pay for the free market and it is why some more regulation is really necessary so this will never happen again and also this country could end world hunger with just 40 billion bucks but instead we do everything but that and spend fuck tons on the military and giving tax breaks to billionaires because of outdated and never helpful Reaganite theories of economics..." He could have said anything else, but he didn't. He had to pick the most soulless (he is unique among the gay community in his lack of dancing skills unless he has somehow gotten better through lessons in DC that his husband, an absolute shite who couldn't even get a good autobiography ghostwritten, made him take) and neoliberal take. Pardon me while I vomit bile onto this Buttigieg 2020 election poster I've been meaning to trash for the last four years. He's the living embodiment of Rainbow Capitalism.

I'd vote for him over Trump (not that I've ever really thought he could win, he's simply too nerdy and rat-faced and gay, which is simply not a winning combination--none of these things would stop me from voting for him, but again, he's got a snowball's chance in hell of winning anything if he was ever nominated), but I'd also be out there in front of the White House holding the quote above with a sign on it every damn day he was in office.

Alright, rant over.

[metternichsathiestballgag]

Thinking about the French revolution

RAAAAH WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND ANGRY LITTLE GOLBINS I HATE THE JACOBINS RAAAA. Parisians are actually subhuman trash that destroy the native virtues of the rural French peasant. I think we should bring back metternich, he would solve racism.

[herpsandbirds]

White-necked Jacobin (Florisuga mellivora), male, family Trochilidae, order Apodiformes, Ecuador

photograph by Yi Feng

[leftistfeminista]

Yair Klein’s Gifted Student

From December 1987 to May 1988, Klein, a retired Israel Defense Forces (IDF) lieutenant colonel, trained fifty men at a “school for assassins” in the Magdalena Medio, just three hours away from Medellín. Operating with an official Israeli government license, Klein trained his students to carry out drive-bys in cars, assassinations by bombs and sniper fire, and door-to-door attacks on entire towns. Klein has since alleged that the CIA recruited him to train the Colombians and that he met with the now dissolved Colombian intelligence agency, the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), upon arriving in the country. “The Americans have the problem of public opinion, international image. We don’t have this problem,” one Israeli working for Klein’s Spearhead mercenary corporation said of the operation.

Five months later, Klein’s trainees Fidel and Carlos Castaño, Alonso de Jesús Baquero, and thirty other men carried out a massacre in the mining town of Segovia. There, Rita Ivon Tobón Areiza, a young woman from UP, had won the 1988 mayoral race by an overwhelming margin. Working with the US-backed Colombian Armed Forces, Jesús Baquero, one of the Castaño’s paramilitary chiefs, headed the massacre. His targets were suspected supporters of the UP.

On November 11, the day of the massacre, the military removed its checkpoints ordinarily positioned at the town’s entrance. According to an Amnesty International report, “regular garrisons of the police and military stood by while the killers moved freely through the town for over an hour.” Jesús Baquero’s forces, armed with a list of targets, carried out door-to-door killings of suspected UP supporters and an assault on the town square, killing forty-three people and wounding more than fifty others. “Yair Klein always considered me a gifted student,” Jesús Baquero would later recall.An Israeli firm sent three thousand assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition to the AUC — arms they used to massacre leftists and displace thousands.

The Castaños would eventually form the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) paramilitary. In 2001, Human Rights Watch determined the AUC was effectively a division of the Colombian military and, according to author John Lindsay-Poland, “the worst violator” in a conflict that claimed 262,197 lives in six decades. In 2002, GIRSA, an Israeli firm in Guatemala tied to the IDF, sent three thousand assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition to the AUC — arms they used to massacre leftists and displace thousands.